Relax: It is neither the Jammu and Kashmir Bank, nor the Jordan Kuwait Bank, which is on sale. It is just a domain named jkbank.com which is currently on sale.

The domain registered in the year 2000 and owned probably by a Korean national or firm has been on sale for the last few years.

In Kashmir the domain has a prospective buyer - The Jammu and Kashmir Bank Ltd and Bank sources reveal they are interested in taking up the domain.

“We have tried to get in touch with the owners, but somehow the negotiations never kicked off” says Sajad Bazar, Editor J & K Bank.

The bank currently owns a few domains like the jkbank.net, jkbank.org, jammuand kashmirbank.com, jkbankonline.com and jkbankonline.net. Bank officials however admit that jkbank.com would have been the preferred domain for the bank.

“We do have well recognised domains, but surely we are interested in jkbank.com. The domain had already been taken otherwise we would have registered it,” adds Bazaz.

Bazaz says the price quoted by the domain owner was ‘too high’.

However for an organization known for its focus on advertising and image building the price factor seems incomprehensible.

In 2006 the bank changed its previous logo to take up a new one in order to attain ‘a professional look and feel’.

The direct and indirect cost of logo conversion in Indian Rupees is believed to run into ‘crores’ (I crore=10m) and the bank says it is bearing the cost in phased manner. The bank is also known to spend a good amount on advertising and sponsorships.

With such precedents, can the price factor be the real barrier for the Bank to take up its preferred domain.

“We are ready to take up the domain. We are ready to negotiate the price, but the owners haven’t entered into negotiations,” explains Bazaz.

Web watchers however hope the domain doesn’t go the whitehouse way. For seven years visitors trying to access the official website of the U.S top office would find themselves entering a porn site, as whitehouse.com remained an adult site from 1997 till 2004, causing embarrassment even inside the White House.

The official site of White House remained whitehouse.gov. Later the whitehouse.com changed owners and was converted into a real estate site. Today it is a search engine for people, which searches over 90 million White Page listings and 14 million Yellow Page. The government never took up the domain. In 2004 Dan Parsi the initial owner of the whitehouse.com claimed 2 billion hits per year just because of its name.

Internet domain names can be bought for as little as $8 a year, but desirable names have been resold for millions of dollars in the past.

During the height of the dot-com bubble, business.com was sold for US$7.5 million in 1999 and AsSeenOnTV.com went for US$5 million. In 2003, men.com was sold for US$1.3 million.

In 1999 US passed the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (also known as Truth in Domain Names Act), to make people who register domain names that are either trademarks or individual's names with the sole intent of selling the rights of the domain name to the trademark holder or individual for a profit liable to civil action.